Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am…. okay. I found out last night, just before bed, that Bill Whelan, a man who was once my boss, an inspiration to me, and something like a mentor to me in my early years of advertising recently took his own life. We hadn’t talked in years, he was apparently suffering for a good while now through some mental illness issues. His wife, who was also a friend of mine back in the day, said “mental illness finished him off as surely as a cancer.” I feel awfully for her and their two children.
Every year, one or two middle aged men, old friends of mine, take their lives. I am absolutely 100% positive this is not unique to me. An aspect of aging that I didn’t see coming. Not like this, not yet. It’s horrible.
I learned about this about 30 minutes before bedtime last night, felt myself on the verge of tears, once again, for a man I hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years. A musician. A great manager. A father.
I texted his old business partner, my other boss from back then with whom I have stayed in touch, much closer. We talk all the time, he hadn’t heard. We chatted. It helped.
I went to sleep, distracted and forgetting to turn on my alarm. I had horrible dreams about once again working at large ad agencies. I had brought them a client, a friend of mine. They put a team of twenty on it. The first thing out of their mouths at the pitch was in direct contravention of the brief. I got disgusted and wandered around the office. It was a Potemkin Village model of the old agency I worked at – the same desks, layout, decor, but there was no one working there. The entire agency was reduced to the twenty people working on this one pitch. It felt right, it felt real.
And then I overslept by over an hour. And I have no time to write this today, because it’s Wednesday, the day with the morning meeting.
I don’t know what Bill has been doing these last twenty years. It seems like his mental illness had taken him away from his family. So many man are alone in their pain. I wish that weren’t the case. I wish there was something we could do.
Hug someone today.
That is awful and I'm sorry to hear it Rick. It seems like every other week I hear about something similar within my own orbit, so you're unfortunately right: this is hitting everyone. I wish I had something better to add but I don't.
i'm so sorry, rick. xo